Emmy Awards: Facts and figures through the years

Screengrab, GI07.19.2012

This year's Emmy ceremony is Sept. 23 in Los Angeles.

Screengrab
/ GI

The Alan Young Show was the first program to be named TV's best variety program, and Truth or Consequences — a program many will remember to this day — won the inaugural Emmy for best game show.Screengrab
/ GI

The medium itself has changed dramatically since Sid Caesar won the Emmy for best actor in 1951 ...Screengrab
/ GI

... The category virtually owned in recent years by three-consecutive Emmy winner and repeat nominee Bryan Cranston, for Breaking Bad.External

Helen Hayes won the Emmy for best actress in 1952 ...Screengrab
/ GI

... long before Claire Danes, whose tightly wound performance in Homeland leads this year's pack of actress nominees, was even born.Handout
/ Showtime

Lou Grant won the Emmy for best drama and Ed Asner was named best actor in the year this year's favourite Claire Danes was born.Screengrab
/ GI

Danes has matured since she first emerged as a shy, brooding 14-year-old in My So-Called Life; her nomination for Homeland comes on the heels of an Emmy win for best actress in a made-for-television movie, for the HBO film biography Temple Grandin.Screengrab
/ GI

NYPD Blue holds the record most drama nominations, 27, for its debut year, in 1994.Submitted photo
/ CBS

Mad Men led the drama field last year, with 19 nominations.AMC
/ National Post

The all-time champion, though, is Roots, which racked up 37 nominations in 1977, in miniseries categories.Screengrab
/ GI

30 Rock holds the record for most comedy nominations in a single awards year with 22 in 2009, thanks in large part to its ensemble cast, guest performances and multiple writing citations. Individual episodes are submitted for consideration, which is why a single program like 30 Rock can rack up a number of nominations in the same category.NBC
/ .

Interestingly, last year's winner and repeat nominee Modern Family came close to equaling 30 Rock's mark, just last year, with 17 nominations.BOB D'AMICO
/ ABC

Parents and children who have both won Emmys range from the classic era of TV — Lucille Ball and Lucie Arnaz — to the more recent, and closer to home, Christopher Plummer and Amanda Plummer and Donald Sutherland and Kiefer Sutherland (pictured). Other proud parents and their high-achieving progeny include Carl Reiner and Rob Reiner, Tony Bennett and Danny and Dae Bennett; Danny Thomas and Marlo Thomas; James Daly and Tyne Daly; and Buz Kohan and Jenji and David Kohan.Getty Images
/ Getty Images

Just as with the Oscars, the Emmys are not the be-all and end-all of TV achievement.Joe Klamar
/ AFP/Getty Images

With the ascendance of quality cable channels like AMC, Showtime, FX and HBO, many more prominent, high-profile performers are moving back and forth between the two, like Danes, nominated for Homeland but more familiar to Gen X and millennial moviegoers for her breakout performance as Juliet opposite Leo DiCaprio in Baz Luhrmann's ferocious, stylized film adaptation William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet.Screenshot
/ Thequotablesblog.com

In the fast-moving world of online streaming, MP3 players and social messaging, the line between big-screen cinema and the small screen is becoming ever more blurred. As this year's Emmy nominees — Homeland, Breaking Bad, Mad Men — show, quality is no longer the factor it once was, either, in separating the two.Apple
/ Handout

Emmy Awards: Facts and figures through the years

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